There has long been a presumption that the price-level stabilization frameworks of Irving Fisher and Chicagoans Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were essentially equivalent. I show that there were subtle, but important, differences in the rationales underlying the policies of Fisher and the Chicagoans. Fisher’s framework involved substantial discretion in the setting of the policy instruments; for the Chicagoans the objective of a policy rule was to tie the hands of the authorities in order to reduce discretion and, thus, monetary policy uncertainty. In contrast to Fisher, the Chicagoans provided assessments of the workings of alternative rules, assessed various criteria—including simplicity and reduction of political pressures—in the specification of rules, and concluded that rules would provide superior performance compared with discretion. Each of these characteristics provided a direct link to the rules-based framework of Milton Friedman. Like Friedman’s framework, Simons’s preferred rule targeted a policy instrument.

中文翻译：

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重新考虑货币政策规则的理论基础：费舍尔与芝加哥

长期以来，人们一直认为欧文费舍尔和芝加哥人亨利西蒙斯和劳埃德铸币厂的价格水平稳定框架基本上是等效的。我表明，费舍尔和芝加哥人的政策背后的基本原理存在微妙但重要的差异。费舍尔的框架在制定政策工具时具有很大的自由裁量权；对于芝加哥人来说，政策规则的目标是束缚当局的手脚，以减少自由裁量权，从而减少货币政策的不确定性。与费舍尔相反，芝加哥人对替代规则的运作进行了评估，评估了规则规范中的各种标准——包括简单性和减少政治压力——并得出结论，与自由裁量权相比，规则将提供更好的表现。这些特征中的每一个都提供了与米尔顿弗里德曼基于规则的框架的直接联系。与弗里德曼的框架一样，西蒙斯的首选规则针对的是一种政策工具。